"Rich (was) always creative, wrote, created and invented," said Narkowich. It found no sign of him and was eventually called off. it is dedicated to the idea that if everyone is thinking alike, someone is not thinking. Eric Miller knows his brother went into the Chugach National Forest and disappeared. im sorry for your loss, Pauline. MISSING IN ALASKA Clip - Killer Mermaids? A jogger vanishes from the top of Mt. He leaned down and gently turned the torso to make sure it was what it looked like, he told me. Landslides, avalanches, fissuring glaciers, overflowing rivers, and collapsing riverbanks all make travel unpredictable at best. I guess if he did it, he did it. The partial jawbone in. Last year the Justice Department awarded a two-year, $1.75 million grant to the Nation's Missing Children Organization and Center for Missing Adults, a clearinghouse that works with authorities. Hed knocked on the front door of the Hillses tidy rambler on a Thursday, around 10:30 in the morning. Nothing. Jenna Miller. Why is Frank McCourt really pushing it? There was no message, only a link to a story from the previous days Alaska Dispatch News. From the air, it was easy to see why Alaska attracts certain kinds of peoplenot just loners and misfits but explorers and adventurers as well, anyone drawn to wild, wide-open spaces. High 51F. Not a shoe. Jim Miller vanished as trees lost their leaves, creating ground cover thick enough to hide valuable clues from even the keenest eyes. Searches in this area are always difficult because of the huge glaciers, the jagged mountains, the sheer remoteness, and the limited search-and- rescue assets. Everyone I met there seemed to know of people still missing or unfound. Dolly Hills herself lost a 13-year-old brother, William, in 1962. Because of senility, he might have set out on foot, only to encounter a bear or fall into the nearby Nushagak River. As I left to catch my flight home, they were bent over a map on the dining-room table at Dollys house, discussing the logistics of dragging the Kenai River. A resilience equal to the worst thing that can happen. Survival was a skill Jim Miller had honed since childhood, when his family lived briefly in tents and wilderness cabins in northern Washington state and eastern Interior Alaska. Thirty-six-year-old Joseph Balderas from Nome faded away into the hills along the Nome-Council Highway while hiking in July. There is only hope of closure for the family, hope that a loved one can be brought home for the last time. Theres a possibility, Leon told me, speaking in a faint voice, as if not wanting to hear himself say it. Its one reason that Eric Miller will always wonder about his brothers fate. Michael LeMaitre remains on the list even though has officially been ruled to have died on Mount Marathon. Her husband reported her missing in 1965, and police learned that she hadnt been seen in almost four years. In September 2007, Paul Schoch, a 68 year-old adventurer from Brule, Wisconsin, was dropped off by airplane at 4,500-foot Skolai Pass in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park for a few days in the wilderness. Yet the two women would keep searching for the next 10 years. The Earth opened up and swallowed him? She is 5-foot-4 and weighs 140 pounds. The family lost track of him after an illness. After almost four hours, Jane entered a meadow and peered into a small, shaded clearing. Its easy to fall prey to the states unforgiving terrain and severe weather, according to those in the business of searching. Off to one side, next to a rotting log, something caught her eye. Four months later, in January of 2015, I flew back to the Kenai Peninsula. Jane called Leon, who was living in Bremerton, Washington; he flew to the Kenai the next day. Not a bone. Of those, 1,027 are still listed as missing. Theres Maryellen McMillin, who disappeared from her Fairbanks home with her green Subaru station wagon in November 1998. Wipert was the caretaker for the remote Ptarmigan Lake Lodge on an in-holding in the Wrangell Park. All he could do from Arizona was check the news from Alaska every day for updates on the Funny River bones. They lived less than a mile away and hadnt heard from him for a while. There is speculation now that he went past Race Point, climbing toward the true summit of Mount Marathon far back in the Kenai Mountains and fell off a cliff somewhere. Author Dave Roberts would later write one of the north's greatest mountaineering tales with the 2007 publication of the book "Escape from Lucania: An Epic Story of Survival.''. In Anchorage, the statewide coordinator of search-and-rescue at the time, Lieutenant Craig Macdonald, had told me about some recent cases, including that of Rick Hills. The boy is grinning from ear to ear. Ricks tracks in the snowright foot dragging, as if hed injured his legled into the woods. Eric Miller wrestles with opposing theories about his brothers disappearance. "They arrived at the Donjek River to find it uncrossable, a raging torrent rushing with glacial meltwater from upstream. But in November of that year, a beach clean-up crew working on Shuyak Island on the south side of the strait found human remains. They were things he knew we could use, Jane told me. In the Yukon-Kuskokwim delta, in western Alaska, the Bethel Search and Rescue group puts up color-coded markers. Jenna Miller. who went missing from Anchorage last year about this time, or September? The hurting that never goes away, we know. Still, some expected the survival cocoon or some part of it would one day be found in one of the big river valleys that offer the easist travel through the uninhabited region. Jenna Miller. How come you cant find my husband?, Shuey told me. He was 35 years old. Id walked right past Richard Bennetts trailer when I retraced Ricks last steps, and Richard had probably been home. Jane felt her heart pound. "Once the foliage and the leaves fall off the trees and clear the way, we'll probably put some planes back up in the air and see if we can see anything that way," Megan Peters, spokeswoman for the Alaska State Troopers, told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation on July 13, and that was the end of it. Like her, Sewell would like to know what really happened to Griffis. Hed disappeared on a ski outing in November. '', still active missing person's bulletin from the Alaska State Troopers, Sue Nott, 36, and Karen McNeill, 37, went missing on 17,400-foot Mount Foraker, Good Samaritan Gerald DeBerry disappeared in the foothills of the White Mountains, it has been 30 years since Japanese national hero Naomi Uemera went missing. But probably the best known missing person case in wild Alaska involves 66-year-old Michael LeMaitre of Anchorage who went up Mount Marathon on July 4, 2012 and never came down. But if theres anybody who could, it would be my son.. Alaska's 586,000 square miles afford countless ways to get lost, by fate or design. Included are black flags, which mark locations where unidentified human remains were found. They wrapped the urn in a brown-paper grocery bag, and Heidi took it home. A ground team put on the mountain to try and track Harper also came up empty. The e-mail appeared in my inbox in September 2014. What happened next remains an enduring Alaska mystery. Along the district's northeastern border, lonely Alaska Highway 1 runs for 125 miles east from a backwoods gas station and convenience store at Gakona Junction to join the Alaska Highway in the comparative metropolis of Tok, population 1,258. The Bennetts had closure for eight years, Shuey told me. And Gerald Deberry, 53, was a Fairbanks man who joined a search for a woman missing in the White Mounains 70 miles north of that community in 2011 only to disappear forever himself. it is hard to find closure with the unknown. She enlisted the help of other volunteers. A big search followed. Or call home, at least, Dolly added. We also know, the way this turned out It could have been the other way around.. More than 3,000 people had been reported missing the previous year in Alaska, a state with a population smaller than San Franciscos. Like McCandless, Griffis, too, wrestled with some personal demons. Dolly and Heidi still suspect foul play, but they fear they may never know the truth about what happened to him. Kelley is one of the many to have gone looking for Michael's body. A couple of months before he disappeared, Rick made a secret trip to Anchorage to buy Christmas presents for the kids and then drove to a friends house to wrap them, coming home with an armful of ribboned gift boxes. Dolly and Heidi contacted Leon shortly after getting the news. She understands why they ask. The body of 51-year-old Bartlett Barnes of Wasilla, who disappeared in the fall of 2012 while trying to cross Butte Creek in the Talkeetna Mountains on a four-wheeler, was found a year later along the banks of the Susitna River. You dont want to dwell on it. They told me a body had been found, and that its DNA had been tested. In the town of Soldotna, about 20 miles from where the bones were found, Dolly Hills got a call from one of her granddaughters. But experienced ones learn to stay put and equip themselves with survival gear.. Glenn Youngkin rules out presidential campaign while in California, 7 bodies found during search for missing Oklahoma teens, US to lift most federal COVID-19 vaccine mandates next week, Multiple fatalities on Illinois highway during a blinding windstorm. Jun 13, 2016 FAIRBANKS Alaska State Troopers are trying to find the location of a Fairbanks woman whose pickup truck was found abandoned along the Parks Highway near Healy on Sunday. Investigators sent a bone sample along with a swab of Bette Bennetts saliva to a Texas lab for DNA analysis, to confirm that the remains were indeed Richards. Former Nabesna District Ranger Mike Thompson has a faint memory of the search for Griffis's cocoon in the park, or near it, in the fall of 2006. They knew Rick was likely dead, but without his body, they couldnt rule out the possibility that he was somehow still alive, perhaps injured or in pain, or even held against his will. First thing I noticed, it had Levis on. There are a number of theories about what causes the disappearances, ranging from local . Thanks for keeping Michael LeMaitres story and others alive. He told people there he was going upriver to McCarthy, an outpost town in the Wrangell-St. Elias Park in Alaska, to test his orange cocoon. Chance of rain 40%. When I first met Dolly, in January of 2005, her son Richard Thomas Hills had been missing for almost a year. Searchers in aircraft repeatedly combed the route from his drop off to the summit. We have to tell them, The remains you received in 2006 were not your son, and we dont know where your son is., The letter Lieutenant Shuey read to Leon Bennett in Lake Havasu City ended exactly like the one Captain Greenstreet read aloud to Dolly and Tom Hills and Heidi Metteer in Soldotna: I understand that there is nothing that I can say that can ever repair the devastation that your family is experiencing. Thats how people in these parts dispose of garbage, but this seemed far more than the usual amount. The bones were close to being ash, Lieutenant Kat Shuey later recalled. So, too, for Richard Lyman Griffis, a continent roaming inventor who lived in Spokane, Washington, Oregon, California, New York and Florida before heading north. That same morning, in Lake Havasu City, Arizona, Lieutenant Kat Shuey read an almost identical letter to a man named Leon Bennett. In June 2014, soon after the discovery of the Funny River bones, Shuey asked for a list of people in the area whod gone missing in recent years. But, she said, sometimes I think they forget how big Alaska is. Between the westernmost tip of the Aleutian Islands and the eastern edge of the Alaska Panhandlea span roughly equal to the distance from California to Floridaa total of 1,332 law-enforcement officers keep the peace. A few people continue to search, but no one at this point expects to find Broach alive. The Alaska missing person's bulletin refers questions on Griffis's "Sept. 20, 2006" disappearance to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in Beaver Creek. Please use the button below to verify an existing account or to purchase a new subscription. After about a quarter mile, hed come upon a house and walked up to the back porch, perhaps hoping to find help. He and Rick Hills must have crossed paths many timesat the Safeway and the hardware store, at gas stations and stoplightsgiven that they lived only a few miles apart along the same highway. Alaska authorities never paid him much notice. They found what was left of him in the spring of 2014. She and Dolly took turns filling me in. For the next hour, Dolly and Heidi described a series of events that I could barely follow. Sewell is now a mountie in northern Manitoba, but in 2007 he was the official Canadian government presence in Beaver Creek, Yukon Territory, a wide spot along the Alaska Highway just across the U.S. border in Canada, northeast of the Wrangell Mountains. But intensive searches turned up no sign of the experienced outdoorsman other than unconfirmed sightings. This puzzled herBennett was still listed as missing in the police database. Dolly was the talker, the instigator who moved things along. Until 1 a.m., the date claimed that he searched for her. How to reverse Diabetes Belly fat: The removal of Diabetes Crime log: Woman's date overstays welcome, refuses to leave, Crime log: Harassment complaints made by township residents, Explore newly opened 334-acre park in Saginaw with virtual tour, http://www.dps.state.ak.us/ast/cib/Missing.htm. See Photos. The lower jaw was missing. Nobody knows for sure how many people have gone into the wild here and never come out. They could begin to move on. At that point, one would think hed realize Something is wrong here. and then turn around and head back to the area where he came up. Tucked among the documents was the notification letter that the Bennetts had been waiting for in the months after theyd found the skeleton. Get the day's top news with our Today's Headlines newsletter, sent every weekday morning. At the top of the list were Rick Hills and Richard Bennett, whose last known locations were close together and only about three miles from the Funny River site. They tracked him to where he'd been dropped off by the bus along the Alaska Highway. Washburn would survive become famous as a photographer and cartographer, and to pioneer the popular West Buttress route to the summit of Mount McKinley, North America's tallest peak, but his story could easily have turned out different. The Troopers announced that they identified the remains of Ronald Oquilluk using DNA from his sister. While cross-checking records with the state medical examiners office, Shuey learned that Richard Bennetts remains had been found and released to his family years earlier. This past July, I received an e-mail from Leon Bennett. Among a hodgepodge of field reports, lab results, correspondence, handwritten notes, and transcribed witness accounts dating back to 2004 was a two-page letter from the director of the Alaska State Troopers, Colonel James Cockrell, dated August 28, 2014. They called the medical examiners office several times, asking when the remains could be released. Robert Hunter, the lead investigator on the case, received the anthropologists findings in March 2006 and discussed them with a superior. "There are eight people missing'' in the Seward area since 1993, she added, and trooper files hold an unknown number of cases of people who disappeared before that date. Now shes the deputy commander of the Alaska Bureau of Investigation, a special unit within the Alaska State Troopers that handles, among other things, missing persons. On February 24, 2004, he had been home from an oil-rig job for just a few days when he left Soldotna in his red Dodge truck to pick up a paycheck in Anchorage, about 150 miles away. She went back to his file. The skull was resting on its side, the face angled toward the ground. Leon, Jane, and Leroy reported Richard missing to the Alaska State Troopers, noting that they hadnt found any of Richards camping gearhis tent, sleeping bag, and mess kiton the property, and that some of his guns were missing too. September 19, 1984 - May 17, 2015. Sincerely, Colonel James Cockrell, Director, Alaska State Troopers.. 2015. They looked for another month and found nothing. Ten years, Dolly repeated. The truck was registered to Luann Miller, 51, of Fairbanks. Jenna Miller. Sixty-year-old John Wipert was the caretaker for the Ptarmigan Lake Lodge on the northern edge of the park when he disappeared in June of 2009. The two women came to believe she was closer to the truth about what had happened to Rick than anyone else, certainly closer than the Alaska State Troopers. The three of them went to Richards place and looked around in silence. Miller is among 3,780 people reported missing in Alaska this year and one of the 219 who remain missing, according to the Missing Persons Clearinghouse maintained by Alaska state troopers. Red means a rough ice road. He was frustrated that his grief felt so raw, as if Richard had disappeared just yesterday. And he led the hunt for Griffis. He was 42 when he disappeared. The anthropologists found them consistent with the markings on the skeleton. The goat trail gets to a point where it peters out & starts to get dicey. She died last April. A few blackened molars clung to the upper jaw. Keith Mallard, who has participated in scores of searches. Alaska State Troopers were notified. In the years since my visit to Soldotna, Id thought of Dolly and Heidi whenever I ran across stories of people who had disappeared. And not even a hint has been found to indicate where 31-year-old Thomas Seibold may have gone. Then there are the people who are not really lost. The Alaska State Troopers announced that they were able to positively identify a body that had been classified as missing for 32 years with the use of DNA evidence. Richard Bennetts family described him as a boy of few words who grew into a man of even fewer words. Just 3 weeks ago. "We were go able to go back to that year and track him,'' Sewell said. "One man didn't want to be found," Hughes said. Hed lost a son, thought hed found him, and lost him again. The mountie still harbors a hope that somebody, somewhere might stumble upon an orange remnant of the survival cocoon, lending at least a hint of exactly where Griffis might have disappeared. (2020) History Channel Although it's not as famous as the Bermuda Triangle, the Alaska Triangle has more unsolved m. They were there to watch runners trudge 3,022 feet from near sea level on Resurrection Bay to Race Point visible high above the city, before turning and charging back downhill to race past the crowds along Fourth Avenue. One such recent find _ a human foot inside a shoe discovered in northwestern Alaska _ is being sent to the FBI's new National Missing Person DNA Database at the agency's Quantico, Va., academy. Was it possible that the remains released to the Bennetts and now buried near Lower Summit Lake were those of Rick Hills, and the scattered bones found in the Funny River fire, Richard Bennetts? If he succumbed to hypothermia, of course, that wouldnt help the situation. They drop a long pole with a big hook in the water, and the boat goes back and forth. Jane and her husband, Leroy, are snowbirds, Alaskan residents who winter in the Southwest. But when he gets to Race Point rock in thick clouds and no one is there, and he sees a defined trail going UP and continuing west, he says to himself: 'I'm not at the top yet, I've got to keep going up.'". Malia Miller. She thanked them. They tried to block those thoughts, but they never went away completely.. Thirty-two-year-old French adventurer Francois Guenot paddled his kayak out of Kamishak Bay on the Gulf of Alaska coast in June 2014 and disappeared along the north shore of Shelikof Strait. A man planning to kill himself wouldnt have done that. LeMaitre was the final, back-of-the-pack competitor in that race. Think of it: 35,000 people, if that, scattered across 10 million acres of rugged terrain. Nearly 80 years ago, a young Washburn was trying to climb 17,150-foot Mount Luciana along with Harvard Mountaineering Club classmate Bob Bates. She even got a helicopter to fly over the area that could locate a person by their thermal body heat. They told him to make the turn and follow them down. Griffis was an inventor always on the move across the country. Two years after he disappeared, hikers stumbled on human remains about 12 miles from Schoch's old campsite. In the center console was $292. He remains missing. Of those, three were also involved in the Richard Bennett case. I was met there by Dolly Hills and Heidi Metteer, Ricks longtime partner. Im frustrated that Im not out there looking for him myself., Leon was caring for one of his daughters, who was recovering from a quintuple bypass. When he did interact with people, he was soft-spoken and kind, especially to his young nieces and nephews; at family get-togethers they would listen in rapt silence as he read childrens books aloudthe only time many of them heard him speak at length. The June before Griffis faded away into the wilderness, Sue Nott, 36, and Karen McNeill, 37, went missing on 17,400-foot Mount Foraker in the Alaska Range. Bette Bennett was in the last stages of a terminal lung disease. The national average is one out of 343 people, according to the FBI. Alaska brims with stories of people who vanish and are given up for dead. Miller is among 3,988 people reported missing in Alaska in 2002 and one of the 217 who remain missing, according to Alaska State Troopers. "Richard disconnected from us after his struggle with cancer,'' she said. As Novakovich crossed the finish line, LeMaitre, a fitness buff and grandfather of two, was still making his way up the mountain. The State Troopers urge anyone with a missing family member to contact the Missing Persons Clearinghouse at 907-269-5038 or email Malia Miller at malia.miller@alaska.gov. They werent quite to the point where if you touched them they would disintegrate, but close., The remains were spread across an area about 60 yards in diameter, presumably the work of scavenging animals. The body found in 2005 and released to the Bennett family in 2006 was not Richard Bennett. He adored them; he had nicknames for each of them and took them fishing every chance he got. The rest of Alaska is policed by fewer than 400 troopers. "But we may never get to know what happened to him. The team investigates the missing jogger's final steps and the potential existence of this enormous predator. story is now being updated. When a woman in Florida finally called mounties wondering if anyone had seen the then 47-year-old man, she had no idea of where to look for Griffis. Spread across almost 38,000 square miles of mountaintops, glacier ice, forests and slopes thick with brush, the Kluane/Wrangell-St. Elias/Glacier Bay/Tatshenshini-Alsek World Heritage Site is larger than the state of Maine and far wilder. "Park officials believe Schoch left his campsite for a day hike, possibly to take pictures of . They thought he looked fine. It was thought he might join the missing forever. We're 8 weeks out from OUT OF CHARACTER Day! Schoch had a history of high blood pressure and diabetes. Dollys husband, Tom, helped but mostly kept busy with work. Lucy Ann Johnson was 77 when her daughter found her. He came to Alaska in the fall of 2006 to test a survival cocoon hed invented. Bette was still healthy enough to make the 20-minute hike from the highway to a picturesque clearing between two large birch trees. The first year was particularly hard on Dolly; she essentially stopped eating, and by the time I met her shed dwindled to about 100 pounds. A few were marked for Jane, with whom Richard had always been close. They told us there was no one else missing in the area, Leon said. Enter your email address to follow Craigmedred.news and receive notifications of new stories by email. Less than six years after Griffis went missing, 66-year-old Michael LeMaitre of Anchorage left the coastal community of Seward along with hundred of other runners competing in the annual Mount Marathon race. After her father's death, she received $800,000 as an inheritance Zoe Kravitz Alyssa Miller (2013-2014) - Gyllenhaal dated American model, Alyssa Miller from . Heidi was the thoughtful one, more apt to listen and absorb. They turned out to be those of Guenot. But the troopers didnt make the connection. The elements can change with amazing speed, particularly in colder seasons. But still.no sign of a bear attack no blood, shredded clothes, shoe(s), race bib. She had a high, lilting voice that sounded cheerful even when she wasnt. His car was found about three weeks later in the parking lot of Resurrection Pass Trail, a popular hiking route in the national forest south of Anchorage. Some remote communities rely on trail markers to guide snowmobilers and other travelers during winter, when whiteout conditions can erase familiar landmarks. He was, by all accounts, good at it. Sewell, when tracked down, confessed he didn't remember a whole lot. Others, like Griffis, just vanished. He believes the tired, likely hypothermic grandfather went at least a mile beyond Race Point and then, realizing something was wrong, tried to descend the mountain to the north to find a trail that wasn't there. Tags: california; Page 2 of 3 < Prev 1 2 3 Next > Nov 7, 2016 #31. havelock Well-Known Member. Mount Marathon towers over the community of Seward at the head of Resurrection Bay about 125 miles south of Anchorage. He would still be laboring toward the top almost three hours after the race began. It was just as the psychic had predicted. Disappearance on Mount Marathon On July 4, 2012, runners gathered in Seward, Alaska, for a three-mile trail race up the mountain that looms 3,000 feet over Resurrection Bay. She was at home when I visited, only partially lucid, so I spent two days with Leon at the house of his sister, Jane Potter, who lives down the street. He finally agreed to call his mother when I told him, Look, if you dont call her, Ill have to file a big report. . "People are swept away in the river and their bodies are never found, so it can't be ruled out," said trooper Mike Brandenburger. A GoFundMe account has been opened for the family of Texan Brad Broach, who has joined the missing in Alaska. I still couldnt believe he would take his own life. Blue signifies thin ice or open water, and green a nearby shelter. He knew them.. Water conditions are colder here and body gases dont develop at the same speed as in the Lower 48, so bodies tend to sink.. The men rushed over, and the three stood in silence. Rick may have re-injured his leg when his Dodge plowed into the snowbank. Could ancient stories of the Thunderbird be true? How could this happen?. He was home alone that day; his wife, Bette, was sick and being cared for by relatives in Washington State. Captain Greenstreet paused without looking up from the letter. The date was July 4, 2012. White and orange indicate a good trail. Please use the button below to manage your account. After the police stopped searching, Dolly and Heidi kept the case alive. Richard always wore blue sweats., Leon can barely talk about the scene now, but at the time, he kept his emotions in check. Routes connecting the lodge to both places were searched. Police suspected hed killed her, but they had no evidence, and he died in the late 1990s. Craig Medred is a former writer for the Anchorage Daily News, Alaska Dispatch and Alaska Dispatch News. The hook grabs onto whatevers on the bottom.. Almost exactly a year later, the four-wheeler the 53-year-old DeBerry was riding when he went missing was discovered, but there were no remains or trace of the rider. It went on for three days. Leon isnt the only one whos had that idea. The late Bradford Washburn -- the famed director of the Museum of Science in Boston who died at the ripe, old age of 96 at his home in Lexington, Mass. The crowd cheered when Matt Novakovich won the 3.5-mile race in less than 45 minutes. They proceeded slowly, scanning their eyes over everything. The two men made the summit, but they almost didn't make it back to civilization. We have one, Dolly said. A hasty search found nothing. Confirmed by DNA. He had quietly hoped the man would turn out to be his son, even though troopers had ruled out that possibility the previous summer. 2023 Anchorage Daily News. Troopers noticed a blue Dodge Ram pickup Tuesday off the northbound lane at 259 Mile. Both the medical examiner and the State Troopers were reluctant to declare the remains Richard Bennetts without DNA confirmation. They interviewed friends and acquaintances police had overlooked. Shuey spent 14 years as a trooper in the field. They built a makeshift 75-foot "rope" out of pack cord knotted together and fought the current, half-slipping, half-swimming, falling into the icy waters past their heads.".

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